The Princess of Mithila and the Golden Image

In the Svetambara account, Malli was a princess of Mithila, daughter of King Kumbha and Queen Prabhavati, of surpassing beauty and accomplishment. Six kings, having learned of her, each sought her hand, and her father found himself unable to refuse any without offending the rest.

The narrative's memorable turn is Malli's response. She had a hollow golden image of herself made in her exact likeness, and into it, through an opening at the crown, she dropped each day a morsel of food. When the six suitors were at last brought before the statue they took it for the princess herself; then Malli opened it, and the stench of the accumulated, rotting food poured out, a demonstration that beneath even the most beautiful body lies only decay. The teaching in non-attachment turned the six from desire to renunciation, and Malli herself renounced the world and attained the state of a Jina. The episode is related as the tradition's sacred narrative rather than as documented history.